100%. Mostly wagies crunching through JIRA tickets and earning a comfy enough salary with strong opinions on how business works, having never done anything close to it.
That's right. Large majority of people on here (and especially reddit CS/programming subreddits) are employees and simply comfy in their corporate job.
It's not even that most won't start their own shop (which is perfectly do-able), it's also that they will actively attack even the mere notion of it.
And its usually using "isms" like "its hard to get clients", "its risky", "multiple clients mean multiple bosses" and "90% of businesses fail in the first 5 years" and other nonsense.
Edit: then the economy takes a turn, mass tech layoffs happen and it makes some people think.
I had the same question. It looks to me that you have to add API keys for data sources.
Although a lot of work no doubt has gone into this, it seems to me like a bit of a pointless project if someone then must source their own data from various (and varying in quality and price) APIs. As mentioned, the entire value of Bloomberg is the data. Its not an interface which almost anyone can create.
Business will involve accounting/finance, sure. It will involve lots of other functions - but business is not defined by accounting/finance.
Its defined by people buying a product or service they find of value - that is core to business (just like the definition of an artist is someone that actually produces art). If you don't have that you don't have a business (no matter how many accountants or MBAs you have).
Large companies put people in very "tight"/narrow well defined roles (developers included) and like to hire MBAs in C-suite roles. And yes, I agree they will have well defined sales pipelines and product market fit.
Business is about numbers, yes - at all sizes of companies.
But what actually drives those numbers?
Its 1) value and 2) sales/and marketing. Its not the accounting department. That's my point.
Understanding costs and margins is crucial, yes. But its very much secondary to having a valuable product that people want and that you can market/sell effectively - that's business, not accounting/finance.
A developer asking questions about the value a product creates and the problems it solves or doesn't solve will do far better than learning accounting/finance as far as "learning business" goes or getting an MBA!
I'm not a Musk fanboy, but he has created multiple valuable companies (spolier alert, he didn't do that by focusing on an MBA but rather on creating valuable products) - here is what he has to say about MBAs in large companies:
"learn business" was mentioned but there seems to be a lot discussion here around accounting and finance - those aren't "business", at least not the core of it anyway.
Accounting for one is recording what has already happened in a business - its merely reporting, nothing more. Its a reporting function of business.
There is far too much focus I feel on accounting and finance in MBA courses. Its not business. An MBA degree these days is sort of an entry price or piece of paper into the C-suite. I don't see that MBA degrees actually teach a lot of business.
Business is finding people and having them pay for value - a product or service. If you have an accounting department or knowledge of accounting/finance, you don't have a business, you have reporting. That's all you have.
Business is far more about sales, marketing, pricing, psychology, product/market fit. Then there is the delivery of that value - the actual product or service.
I'd also say a big part of business is learning about and being about to solve problems in a certain market.
Accounting/finance in a discussion of "learn business" should come way down the list IMO - its nothing more than reporting.
(A lot of the resources here focusing on accounting or finance are great resources - if you want to learn accounting / finance or if you want to get an MBA but they don't necessarily equate to learning "business". Also there is no better way learn business than doing rather than reading about it. I heard someone once say that you'd learn more about business running a lemonade stand than doing an MBA - I tend to agree).
"Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor" by Erik Dietrich is an interesting read. Erik talks about his experiences in office politics in large companies. He makes some interesting observations and analogies. Recommended. It would be interesting to get your thoughts on the book if you choose to read it frustratedmngr